Apparently Millennials Don’t Need Desks …

Last year, the Marriott group kicked out desks from their hotel rooms in order to cater to millennial guests; thus giving the world another reason to blame millennials. Well, thanks … I guess?

2016 was a difficult year for our elders. The Marriott hotel group’s announcement had something to do with it – in December 2015 they made it known that desks were being kicked out of their newly designed rooms to cater to the younger business executives checking into hotels. Yes, that would be us, the millennials.

And we stole the Gen X’s desks.

The outbursts that followed the renovation plans of many American hotels (with the expectation of Indian hotels in tow sooner than later) were disgruntled to the point that even our grandparents would be allowed to feel taken aback. If you haven’t already read the long rant that triggered the overwhelmed nervous breakdowns, clickhere. The Wall Street Journal went so far as to call it the ‘Great Marriott Deskodus’.

Now the curious part is that in September 2016 Marriott once again made an announcement, one that is the equivalent of throwing a rubber tube at a middle-aged Delhi aunty thrashing about in a public swimming pool in sheer panic during her first swimming lesson. Basically, the hotels have reintroduced desks.

On wheels.

As a self-respecting millennial I feel forced to respond to this display of daft decision-making in my generation’s name. To mitigate in the battle between schmancy hotels and grumpy geeks of the sort we encounter in offices so often. Allow me to bust some millennial myths here.

Dear Hotel Owners of The World, we’d like you to know that your design consultants weren’t as off the mark as your complaint boxes would have you believe. As a matter of fact, we do prefer to work by placing new-age computers on our laps because, believe it or not, there are reasons why desktops and laptops are named the way they are.

You see, if you start accommodating the Gen X requests – and for how long – remember that their retirement days are approaching at a faster rate than ours. Soon, you’d be expecting us to call your grey-haired concierge to ask for directions. I repeat, we’d rather not roll down our windows when the whole affair can be wrapped up by gliding our fingers like Russian ballerinas on ice.

Have you seen the phones that the Gen X grew up with? They were told by their parents that too many calls would crash the house budget. These are people who would spend a minimum of two years begging their fathers to buy them mobile ‘handsets’. They spent their teenage waiting for hours by the dial-up setbox (or whatever the archaic hell it was called) to watch a 20-second porn clip. Their hearts beat fast at having floppy disks with manual locking options. They used pagers!

The wheels were unnecessary trouble on your part. Although I’m now starting to get excited about the prospect of a wheeled desk. As a millennial living up to my reputation of laziness, I can imagine using it for transport of tablets across the room between friends. We could even spin it around for some gaming sessions.

Here, the Gen X uncle jis and aunty jis might ask, what is it that our eternally-connected generation is bringing to the table? And here I’m forced to say, let the table be damned, sir.